Jay Amberg's Blog, page 18

National Indie Excellence Awards finalist

Bone Box has been named a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, Thriller category. See the complete list of finalists and winners here.

Self-Publishing Review, Bone Box

An exciting review today from Self-Publishing Review. Highlights below. Remember, only two days remaining to enter the Goodreads Book Giveaway.

What helps this story hit all the right spots, is Amberg’s ability to bring not just the characters to life, but Turkey as well.…Amberg not only sets the scenes, he does it with ease making the reader nearly feel at home in an exotic land.…

All the characters are nuanced, and at times, everyone’s motives are questioned.…Most of the turmoil is boiling under the surface, adding to the tension. Who and what will explode creates anxiety adding layer upon layer of intrigue and suspense.

The lingering questions of what’s real and what isn’t keeps the reader invested in the story. It’s not just the mystery about what’s inside the ossuary and if the artifacts are authentic.…Politics, religion, sexuality, culture, deceit, greed, and prejudices turn this thriller into a page-turner. There’s a need to find out what will happen with the bones and letters, but there’s also a desire to know what will happen to the characters.…

…The stories within the story demand attention and remind us that one event can be perceived rightly or wrongly from several perspectives.

Bone Box is an intriguing read and will appeal to those who enjoy religious thrillers along the lines of Dan Brown.

What do you think of the latest review?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ideal for Father’s Day, anniversaries or birthdays, 52 Poems for Men is the first book I published through Amika Press. I am now giving away 10 copies on Goodreads. Please click here or the book cover to enter to win.

 

Just Reviews, Bone Box

Jay Amberg:

Bone Box has been acclaimed by Fran Lewis of Just Reviews: “…will mystify, entrance, enthrall and captive readers.” You can read the full review here. Thank you so much, Fran.

Originally posted on Just Reviews:

The Bone Box: Jay Amberg

Within this novel there are many conflicts not just the one faced by archeologist Sophia Altay. Altay finds with the help of her assistants an ossuary that within it has relics and documents that date back to early Christianity and could change our understanding if what is written on these documents is revealed. But, as the story opens Joe Travers is being sent to assess the dig, find out what is really happening there and possibly be told to terminate Sophia’s reign as director of the dig. The search for the contents of the ossuary, which was hidden by her assistant, sets the tone for this novel. Abrahim her assistant follows her every guideline and what is uncovered would change his life and others too.

The author describes each scene in a very different manner as the reader can feel the heat, the warmth, and…

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Bone Box excerpt 2: The Curtain Wall

Joseph Travers, the novel’s main character, is an American who has come to Ayasuluk Hill in Turkey to evaluate the Saint John’s Cathedral archeological site. This scene takes place early in the morning after his arrival in Selçuk.

Travers wakes from a dream of tunnels, caverns, and subterranean cities. Lost in a labyrinth lit only by flickering votive candles, he makes his way along stone corridors lined with images of saints so faded that the red of their robes and the gold of their halos are barely visible. The passageways widen and narrow in a pattern he can’t figure out. Intermittently, shadows sweep the periphery of his vision, but he remains alone. The ground beneath his bare feet is sometimes smooth flagstones and sometimes gritty cinders. The air blows hot, then becomes cool and still, then sultry, then dank. Behind the sweet odor of melting wax lurks a mustiness, as though he has stepped into an ancient vault recently opened. Broken wheelbarrows, discarded shovels, heaps of potsherds, and rows of dark plastic bottles line the walls. And piles of children’s bones lie at each of the domed intersections.

Sweating and disoriented, he rolls over on the bed and stares at the ceiling. Birds are chirping over the rattle of the air conditioner, but he blinks only darkness. He sits up and squints at the digital alarm—4:47. He’s at the Hitit Hotel on the main road at the outskirts of Selçuk in southern Turkey, not in some macabre underground maze. When he returned to the hotel from Sophia Altay’s house, he saw Charles Lee swimming laps in the pool. Lee had an efficient, even mechanical, stroke, and he didn’t notice Travers. Travers had a far greater need to walk than talk so he left the hotel. The road was busy at first, but none of the passing vehicles even slowed to check out the solitary rambler. An hour out of town, as the traffic subsided and the stars spread around a quarter moon, his mind traveled back along the path he had so often trod the last three years…

Now, Travers wobbles to his feet, teeters into the bathroom, and turns on the light, which buzzes before snapping brightness all about him. By the time he returned to the hotel around midnight, the bar was closed and the lobby empty. His Amish phone held no messages from Altay or Kirchburg or Lee or anyone else, and so he went to sleep only to wake at the subterranean labyrinth. Now, despite his nocturnal trek and his lack of sleep, he’s wired. The face in the mirror looks haggard, but the eyes gleam. He douses himself with cold water in the shower and brushes his teeth. His fingers and toes tingle. He isn’t exactly hyperventilating, but his breathing is quick. When he pulls on shorts and a T-shirt, his legs and arms quiver. His feet prickle in his walking shoes as he goes down the stairs and out into first light.

The moon is still well up. Cars and trucks pass him at intervals, slapping the cool air and splashing light across the pavement. A man on a black bicycle peddles by. A cock’s crowing interrupts traditional Turkish music playing somewhere among the flat-roofed buildings at the base of Ayasuluk Hill. Though the sun isn’t yet up, the citadel holds light. A tour bus with tinted windows blows past him. A single, large black-winged bird soars like a shadow.

The jangling in his hands and feet abates as he walks into town, but he still feels disjointed. Women with scarved heads huddle silently near a flatbed truck with its motor running and its exhaust pipe belching blue-gray fog. A block farther on, men slouch smoking on a wooden wagon hitched to a tractor. Travers’ breathing doesn’t calm until he makes the turn toward the cathedral’s gate. A mangy black dog tracks him, wagging its tail and barking, but no boys are selling Roman coins.

To dispel the dream, Travers needs to be above ground and in the open—and he wants to feel the sunrise. The gate is shut, but, remembering the rock, he pushes hard against the door. It scrapes back an inch so he puts his weight into it. When he gets it open a foot, he slides through the opening. He shuts the gate and shoves the rock back in place. As he walks past the ticket booth and up into the ruins, birds sing in the pines. Light tips the marble columns ahead of him, but the partially restored brick walls are dim silhouettes. When he reaches higher ground, he looks over Selçuk’s roofs to the eastern hills limned with light.

He sits on a stone bench in the western courtyard so that he can watch first light traverse the fields and orchards out to the Aegean. He presses his palms against the cool stone and rocks slowly, feeling the breeze on his face. Birds begin swooping forays to his left, and up through the pines on his right a light is on in Altay’s house. The sun tricks him, flashing first on the distant water and then igniting the hills above Ephesus before touching the back of his neck. Still unable to shake the dream despite the sun’s warmth, he stands and climbs onto the top of the curtain wall. He sets his feet apart and stretches his arms as if to bid the dawn some pagan greeting. He raises his eyes to the pale gold sky, and then he glances down.

The body lies crumpled on the rocks at the base of the wall sixty feet below. One black shoe is missing. The legs of the pants are askew, the bulky torso contorted, and the white shirt stained dark at the collar. The head is twisted to the side, the bald skull split as though Sirhan dove to the boulders. Blood discolors his mustache above his frozen grimace. Travers’ breath catches. He drops to his knees and teeters forward as though he, too, is going to plummet from the curtain wall.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

I am giving away 5 copies of Bone Box on Goodreads, beginning today and ending May 9th. Please click here or the image below to enter to win.

Kirkus Reviews, Bone Box

Kirkus Reviews has just written about Bone Box. What do you think of the review?

A novel of danger and adventure about an archaeological discovery that threatens to rewrite biblical history.

Amberg’s (America’s Fool, 2012, etc.) thriller takes readers to Turkey, where Joe Travers, a former Motorola executive, visits an archaeological site funded in part by his friend’s foundation. Joe finds the project riven by conflicts between Sophia Altay, the Turkish-French lead archaeologist, who quickly wins him over; Leopold Kirchburg, the Austrian project director with a considerable ego; and Charles Lee, who represents right-wing foundations that provide much of the financial support. The archaeologists discover an ossuary containing relics and documents that could substantially change humanity’s understanding of early Christianity.

The search for the ossuary’s contents—which were hidden by Sophia’s devoted assistant, Abrahim—drives much of the book’s plot. Scenes of beatings, killings, and chases are punctuated by moments of extreme emotion; for example, at one point, Joe is “already in a quandary, the balance between the breathtaking beauty of the day and the sordid affairs of men not at all clear”; at another, Abrahim’s “blood boils—the Janissary blood, the blood of his lost ancestors, the wanderers and cave dwellers alike.”

In Joe, Amberg offers a narrator who’s a keen observer, which allows the story to blend archaeological intrigue with a sharply drawn portrait of urban and rural Turkey. There are some clever turns of phrase, as when Joe notes that a document displayed on a computer screen is “illuminated in a way that would shock medieval monks.”…The author keeps the tension high…as Joe rushes to sort out everyone’s motivations and loyalties. Readers will be too caught up in unraveling the plot to wonder about the unanswered questions regarding the ossuary’s contents.

A…well-written, fast-paced thriller that follows in the footsteps of The Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones.

Bone Box excerpt 1: Uncovering the Ossuary

I’m happy to announce that Amika Press has just published Bone Box, my thriller/mystery novel set at an archaeological site in Turkey. It is available at Amazon and the Amika Press website, on Kindle, and coming soon to Barnes & Noble, iBook, Kobo and Nook.

Here is an excerpt from the book’s second chapter. I would love to find out what you think. Please let me know.

The sky is cobalt, but the sun is already low—and little light reaches the trench in which the two men work. The evening air is hot and still as though it has hung there for centuries. Sweat soaks the stout man’s sleeveless T-shirt and mats the gray and white hair on his arms and shoulders. His nose is bulbous above his mustache, the top of his head bald except for long strands of hair hanging limply over his left ear. He grunts as he pushes dirt aside with his trowel. The taller, younger man is more careful, but he, too, breathes hard as he whisks dirt with his brush. The discovery, far more than the exertion, is taking his breath. He is clean-shaven; his features are fine, his black hair thick. Neither man speaks until they have completely uncovered the ancient ossuary, the bone box.

When the stout man stands, his head is still well below the trench line. He stabs the trowel into a pile of dirt, wipes his grimy hands on his pants, pulls up the front of his shirt, and smears the sweat from his face. He picks up an empty plastic water bottle, glares at it, and tosses it next to the trowel. The younger man sets his hands on his hips, catches his breath, and stares at the ossuary. The bone box, a meter long and seventy centimeters wide, seems to glow even in the trench’s shadows. Although he can’t read the words etched into the stone, he recognizes them as Aramaic. The symbols—the equal-armed cross within the circle within the six-pointed star—are familiar, but their juxtaposition is not.

As the call to prayer begins, a cirrus horsetail swirls through the rectangle of sky. The voice barely carries into the trench, but the two men turn and stand still. The heavy man murmurs prayers, and the thin one bows his head in silence, his prayer of a different sort. A prayer of both gratitude and supplication. A prayer that this ossuary is what he yearns for it to be. The cloud’s wispy tail snaps clear.

When the echo of prayer ceases, the stout man squats and digs his fingers under the corners of the bone box.

“Wait!” the young man says in Turkish. “She should be here. We must wait for her.”

Glowering across the box, the stout man grabs the hand-pick he used earlier.

“No!” The young man stoops and presses his palms on the ossuary’s lid. “She must open it.” His face reddens, and his fingers burn as though the ossuary is too sacred, too hallowed, too inviolable, to be touched by humans.

The stout man swings the pick across the young man’s knuckles.

The young man leaps back, his eyes wide. His mouth opens, but words don’t form. Blood beads on the index and middle fingers of his right hand.

The stout man leans over and jams the pick’s tip under the rim of the ossuary’s lid. As he pushes the handle with both hands, getting his weight into it, the lid creaks open. Keeping the pick in place as a wedge, he kneels and runs his stubby fingers under the lid. Stale air rises as he lifts the lid, holds it to his sweating chest, and stares into the box.

Despite himself, despite his stinging fingers and welling tears, the young man steps forward and peers into the box. Making the sign of the cross repeatedly, he takes a series of deep breaths in an unsuccessful attempt to calm himself. Blood trickles down his hand and drops, bright splotches darkening into sandy soil. Blinding sacrosanct light rises from the ossuary, weaving around them and spiraling from the trench. He glances at the stout man who is unable to see the light, runs his hand through his hair, and gazes back into the box. He cannot draw his eyes from the contents, though his pupils might at any second be seared and his skin peel away. The moment is every bit as frightening as it is exhilarating. His blood boils—the Janissary blood, the blood of his lost ancestors, the wanderers and cave dwellers alike. There is much more to this even than he imagined, much more to it than she will at first believe.

Ayasuluk Hill

Photograph by Mark Henry Larson.

In this photo, I’m standing at the foot of Ayasuluk Hill in Turkey, where much of my novel, Bone Box, plays out. The column over my left shoulder is from the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Saint John’s Basilica archeological site is directly above my head. The 7th century citadel stands at the top of the hill above the İsa Bey Mosque built in 1375.

Humans have lived on this hill at least since 6000 BC. From the walls of the fortress, you can look down through Western history at the cathedral’s ruins, the mosque, the remnants of the temple, the ancient city of Ephesus, and the Aegean Sea.

Red Rock Canyon

The previous header image is of Red Rock Canyon, outside Las Vegas. Photograph by John Evans via freeimages.com and utilized for the back cover of America’s Fool. Thanks, John.